Design and Evaluation of Wireless Health Care 
Information Systems in Developing Countries

Matthias Nicola			Matthias Jarke

Abstract

In many developing countries there is a tremendous demand for 
communication and information services, but conventional wired
infrastructure to implement them is lacking. Wireless communication
is easier and cheaper to introduce and to maintain, especially in remote
and less developed areas. Based on the analysis of a distributed health
care information system in Tanzania, we derive the main requirements
of wireless data communication in developing countries and discuss
which wireless technologies may be appropriate. In order to cope with the
limited bandwidth and unreliability of wireless communication links  as
well as to reduce communication costs, wireless information systems need
to employ data replication.  We propose replication strategies for such
wireless health care information systems in developing countries like
Tanzania, and assess their performance in terms of communication costs
using workload  characteristics from the Tanzanian case study.